Science and Society

It has been argued in this course that science is a social process. Do you agree?

Introduction:

The most widely used definition of social process states that “social process is a process involved in the formation of groups of persons”. Furthermore, referring to civilisation, social process is defined as “the social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organisation”. (WordNet – Online dictionary definition) (1). This paper looks at how science has become part of this process and examines how it has achieved so, in terms of certain distinct perspectives.

How society is changing:

Within science, scientists formulate laws and applications that continually adapt to sociocultural changes and account for observations. Inventors on the other hand, create new technology in order to accomplish practical goals. Historical precedent proclaims that significant social changes have come about during periods where relations between human formations and technology have been remodelled. Adopting new technology eventually leads to social balance of power through economic relationships and therefore social change. Cynthia Cockburn in particular, is an author distinctly aware of the dependency between technology and society and in her 1983 article 'Caught in the wheels' ( Donald MacKenzie (Editor), Judy Wajcman (Editor), 1999, p.126 ) she stresses the growing engagement of feminism and technology. It soon becomes apparent that science, society and technology, are all closely linked. This is strikingly evident in today's society, which has without a doubt changed dramatically and continues to be an ever alternating phenomenon. Fewer girls than boys take on science subjects at schools. This is due to an education structure that encourages girls to study arts and humanities and in turn, this gender stereotyping creates fallacious perceptions that science is an area suited better for boys. As Rossiter says, “Most [women] chose to enrol for...

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It has been argued that contemporary science is socially (re)contextualised, with porous boundaries between institutions of science and those of wider society, and open to public dialogue. Describe how these claims apply to ONE of the five issues below and assess how the prevailing social conditions of science affect scientists' performance on those selected issues: 3. proposals for upstream public engagement in science, specifically uncertain and contested science
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According to ……..science has moved away from being simply a production of knowledge, science motivated for the creation of knowledge for knowledge sake into a mode 2 science with consists of turning science into an multidisciplinary production of knowledge. Science now based off the idea of getting funding for real life application of the science tey intend to study. Due to this new Mode 2 science we are experancing , the lines between science and the oter world have been blured.
Gibbons and colleagues argued that a new form of knowledge production began emerging in the mid-20th century that was context-driven, problem-focused and interdisciplinary. It involved multidisciplinary teams that worked together for short periods of time on specific problems in the real world. Gibbons and his colleagues labelled...

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Since classical antiquity, science as a type of knowledge has been closely linked to philosophy. During the Islamic Golden Age, the foundation for the scientific method was laid, which emphasized experimental data and reproducibility of its results across multiple experiments.[5][6][7] In the early modern period the words "science" and "philosophy of nature" were sometimes used interchangeably.[8] By the 17th century, natural philosophy (which is today called "natural science") was considered a separate branch of philosophy.[9]
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Lecture sheet-1, What is sociology? “ It ain’t the things we don’t know that gets us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so”.-Artemus Ward
What is Society?
• A group of sentient beings
• A group of physically interested individuals (Ell Good)
• Society is a state of quality of mind (MackIver)
• An association of individuals organized, for given ends (Bushee)
• Society is the system of social relationships in and through which we live
What is the definition of science?
• An objective, logical and systematic method of analysis of phenomena devised to permit the accumulation of reliable knowledge.
• Knowledge achieved through research.
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